Home

Services

Math and Instruction

About

concrete

  • Matching Cards for Discount and Tax

      This is a photo of matching cards for the topic of percent discount and percent tax. Students are given a card with an item to buy, a percent discount and our state tax rate of 6% (not listed). We’ve identified 4 steps for to find the total amount to pay the cashier: compute discount,…

  • Percent Discount Scaffolded and Concrete

    I continue to be surprised at how much of a challenge computing percent discount is for students. It’s prior knowledge. If you ask them to explain what a discount is in their own words you’ll get a response like “it makes something cost less.” The students may even have mastery of computing a percent of…

  • Color Coding and Representation for Integers

    This example involves adding integers which is a major challenge for many students. There are two strategies present in the photo. Color coding is an effective way to break down a concept into parts. Here red is used for negative numbers and yellow for positive. The numbers are written in red and yellow with colored…

  • Kim and Kanye are Prior Knowledge (with scaffolding)

    This is a portion of scaffolded notes I provided for a lesson on functions. This shows two key strategies I often employ: scaffolding and connections to prior knowledge. The scaffolding is seen in how blanks are provided for students to fill in key information. This saves time on copying notes while still engages students in…

  • Visual Representations

    In preschool kids are assigned a color and shape as identification. Their names are too abstract at that age. This strategy is effective for teaching in general.

  • Conceptual Presentation of Percents

          Percents is a very challenging concept for students often because it is presented in symbolic terms, e.g. 40% of a 25 is what? Students typically understand what 100% and 50% mean. The concept of percent can build on this intuitive understanding. Here is my approach using a Concrete-Representation-Abstract approach (from a lesson…

  • Unit Rates

    Real life applications in of themselves will not make a concept real for many if not most students with special needs. They likely need the concept broken down into more concrete form (CRA). For this problem I would fudge the numbers and have 42 oz at $6 (7 oz per dollar) and a 5 oz…

  • Representations of Concepts

    Three ways to represent perimeter: I taught a lesson on perimeter to a 5th grade class. First I had them create a rectangular pen for their animals and they counted the number of fence pieces. Then we drew a rectangle to represent the pen. Finally we looked at the formula. This allows a deeper conceptual…